The Beaver State is shaping up real perty in American Truck Simulator, going by new work-in-progress videos from the first-person trucker’s Oregon expansion. I am, you may not be surprised to hear, particularly taken with its forests and rivers. I know where I’ll be moving my base of operations when the expansion launches later this year. For now, come see Oregon in these new videos. (more…)
On the one hand, I do like the sound of a truck-driving game that, so we’re told, focuses more on the aesthetic appeal of a multi-tonne road trip than it does the simulatory side of hauling a big rig around. On the other, pretty much my favourite thing to do in American Truck Simulator is to flick the wipers on it when it rains and dip the headlights when there’s oncoming traffic.
I just hope that upcoming rival Truck Driver, whatever poppier take on long-distance haulage it has planned, doesn’t throw too many dashboard babies out with the suspension calibration and trailer manufacturer bathwater. (more…)
I always enjoy when ‘community challenges’ have logical in-game consequences, when players pull together to change the world by perhaps shaping a story or opening a new area. In American Truck Simulator, virtuatruckers are pulling together to help clear a landslide and re-open a closed stretch of California’s Highway 1. A real-world landslide last year blocked off sections of the beautiful coastal route near Big Sur, and developers SCS Software followed suit. Now the real-world route is closer to re-opening, SCS are preparing to do so in their simulated America too. The community challenge: when players have hauled enough loads to and from the landslide, Highway 1 will reopen. (more…)
Forget Newell’s billions, Plunkbat and whichever indie renaissance is currently happening: the real success story of Steam, over the years, is superficially dour and highly-specific vehicle simulations finding large audiences who have very little interest in steering torque or rim patterns. I have filled these pages with paeans to American Truck Simulator‘s soul-searching road odysseys, to the hypnotic satisfaction of stripping parts in Car Mechanic Simulator 2018, and even to the rhythmic, weirdly cyberpunk otherness of casting lines and gutting trout in Fishing: Barents Sea.
I’d had gentle hope that Bus Simulator 2018 might similarly be more than the sum of its dry, mass transit parts, but actually playing the thing reveals a game working overtime to be charming. This is a bus-driving game that is absolutely delighted> to be a bus-driving game, and wants me to feel the same way. And y’know what? I think I do. And it’s all thanks to Mira Tannhauser, the world’s number one fan of being on a bus. (more…)
The enduring success of SCS’s Truck Simulator series is no huge surprise, even if its initial ascent to fame was unexpected. The combination of light business management, relaxing, meditative repetition and gorgeously recreated environments make for an ideal chill-out experience for people who haven’t done long, tiresome driving for a job already. Today, both American Truck Sim and Euro Truck Sim 2 get a little bit bigger, as Patch 1.31 arrives for both games, adding new roads and features to both.